JCU’s record number of Indigenous graduate health professionals

Five Indigenous students are graduating from JCU with a medical degree and two are graduating as dentists. Another three Indigenous doctors have completed their training to become fully qualified GPs through the University’s GP training program.

JCU has experienced a steady increase of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates across all health disciplines in the past five years. This year’s doctors, dentists and GPs join a record graduating class of 46 health professionals, including nursing and allied health, awarded at ceremonies in Cairns and Townsville this week.

Dean of JCU’s College of Medicine and Dentistry, Professor Richard Murray, said the results reflect the work the University is doing to attract and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Professor Murray said JCU is committed to closing the gap in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health outcomes. He said training health professionals from Indigenous backgrounds has a very real impact on the health of those communities.

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities suffer poorer health than their non-Indigenous counterparts,” Professor Murray said.

“We are committed to increasing the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who go on to fulfilling careers as health professionals. We also make sure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health is embedded across our curricula, to ensure that every graduate in medicine and dentistry is technically and culturally competent to provide high quality health care to Indigenous patients,” Professor Murray said.

These latest graduates means that JCU has now produced a total of 38 Indigenous doctors and 11 Indigenous dentists. In addition, five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander doctors have qualified as General Practitioners through JCU’s GP training program since it was established in 2016.

The University’s efforts have recently been recognised with a Leaders in Indigenous Medical Education (LIME) LIMELight Award for Sustained Excellence in Indigenous Student Recruitment, Support and Graduation, and a LIMELight Award for Excellence in Community Engagement.

Dr Nickalus Asera Saveka still can’t quite believe he has completed his Bachelor of Dental Surgery.  Hailing from both Murray (Mer) and Moa Islands in the Torres Strait, he never thought he’d even make it to university.  Yet as a mature age student he found himself accepted into the JCU dentistry course.

Dr Saveka is now one of only a handful of dentists in Australia from either an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander background. He said it is such a rarity that even when he was undertaking his fifth year student placement on Thursday Island, the community didn’t believe he was one of their own.

“I would talk to them in their Creole dialect, a type of Pidgin English, and they would look at me with surprise, and still not even register that I was a Torres Strait Islander,” Dr Saveka said.

“They had never seen anyone of their kind as a dentist before. I felt it was a big thing going back there to work as a student dentist.”

Dr Saveka’s advice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students is to always believe in themselves, to feel the fear and do it anyway.

“We have to change our way of not aiming for anything higher, because we think we’re not smart enough.  I was never smart at school either, but it’s just that thinking.”

For 2019 medicine graduate Dr Aaron Scolyer, a childhood in Alice Springs fueled his desire to be a doctor. The more he saw of the disadvantage around him and the impact the lack of healthcare had on communities, the more he wanted to do something about it.

“We have huge problems in this country with the lack of health care serving Indigenous Australians. It is so sad and it is so wrong,” Dr Scolyer said.

“You see things in rural and remote communities that you shouldn’t see today. From lack of access and lack of healthcare to a lack of engagement with the health care system.”

After completing the final years of his degree with the JCU Clinical School in Cairns, Dr Scolyer will enter his intern year at the Cairns Hospital in 2020. His next step to fulfilling his passion for a career in rural and remote medicine.

Now a qualified General Practitioner, Dr Danielle Carter graduated from medicine at JCU before going on to complete her GP specialisation through the University. Earlier this year was awarded a Fellowship with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.

“It’s been great going through JCU as an undergraduate and then to do my postgraduate training through them. I understood their expectations and all the people I knew from medical school are running the GP training as well.

“They were familiar with me and I had that background with them. It felt like one big family,” Dr Carter said.

Dr Carter is keen to see more Indigenous students follow her footsteps into medicine, and is doing what she can to support students and GP registrars through their training.

“I decided a few years ago that this is how I can help. So now I'm working with the Indigenous GP Registrar Network (IGPRN) to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander GP trainees through their training.”

“It is a wonderful support network made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander doctors. They use peer support to help with training programs and learning and development all around Australia.

JCU offers a range of pathways into university for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, including the Indigenous Health Careers Access Program.